Her ringing soprano came back to him, like an echo magically transmuted into golden beauty: “The other side! Around the point.” She waved him vehemently toward the hidden shore beyond the headland. Something of her foreboding terror passed into the soul of her lover. Plunging down into the gully, Everard ran out upon the beach and doubled the point. Whatever peril there was, if any existed, lay there; he would reach it first. The waves almost washed his feet as he toiled through the loose sand at the base of the little ravine. Breathless, he pushed on until he reached the point, where he had full view of the stretch of sand. Then at what he saw the breath came back to him in one gasping inhalation. He stopped short in his tracks, and stood shaking. The sun had just risen above the cloudbank. Black, on the shining glory of the beach, a man lay sprawled grotesquely. It was almost at the spot where Serdholm had been found. Though the face was hidden and the posture distorted, Everard knew him instantly for Haynes, and as instantly knew that he was dead. He ran forward and bent over the body. Haynes had been struck opposite the gully, by a weapon driven with fearful impetus between his ribs from the back, piercing his heart. A dozen staggering prints showed where he had plunged forward before he fell. The flight was involuntary—for he was dead almost on the stroke—the blind, mechanical instinct of escape from the death-dealing agency. There was no mistaking that great gash in the back. Haynes had been killed as Serdholm was. Sickening with the certainty of what he was to find, Everard Colton turned his eyes to the tablet of the sand. There, exactly as the ill-fated reporter had drawn it on his map, the grisly track of the talons stretched in double line across the clean beach, toward the gully’s mouth. Except for this the sand was blank. For a few steps he followed the trail, then turned back to the body. In the pocket he found his brother’s revolver. So Haynes had been struck down without warning! For the moment, shock had driven from Colton’s mind the thought of Helga. Now he rose to fend her from the sight of this horror, and saw her moving swiftly around the point. “Go back!” he cried. “You must not come nearer!” With no more heed of him than if he were a rock in her path, the girl made a half-circle of avoidance, and sinking upon the sand gazed into the dead man’s face. The eyes were closed, and from the calm features all the expression of harshness had fled. Gone were the lines of pain; the dead face wore for Helga the same sweetness and gentleness that, living, Haynes had kept for her alone, and the lips seemed to smile to her as she lifted the head to her lap and smoothed back the hair from the forehead. “He is dead?” she asked dully, looking up at Everard. “Yes,” said the young man.